Maverick Mastery®

Many organisations are considering the best cost effective way to continuously develop their employees and establishing a peer to peer mentoring programme is an increasingly sought after solution for some companies. Mentoring specialist Judith Germain provides a step by step guide on how to embed a peer to peer mentoring programme within an internal comms department.

What is peer mentoring and does it differ from coaching?

Coaching and mentoring are quite different although a lot of practioners use the terms interchangeably. Coaching begins with the premise that the answers are within the person being coached. The coach’s role is to help the individual understand that and via the use of encouraging and questioning techniques, helps elicit the solution. A coach is non directional and never provides advice.

By contrast a mentor is an expert who provides guidance and advice within a more developmental relationship. Mentoring requires flexibility of the mentor and their ability to use a wide range of techniques to guide the mentee.

Peer mentoring takes place when the mentor is not in a position of authority over the mentee. For example an employee in an internal comunication dept might have a colleague within the same department as their mentor. The mentor will guide their colleague based on the life experience that they have gained and their professional expertise within the communication arena.

Implementing a peer to peer mentoring programme

For any mentoring programme to succeed it needs to be embedded within the culture of the organisation and be supported by the senior management team. The process needs to be transparent and be an essential part of the company’s Talent Management programme. This ensures that the mentoring programme fulfils the company’s goals and objectives and isn’t an exercise that is seen by management to be time costly, inefficient and unproductive. Neither should it be seen by employees within the internal comms department as a programme where the mentors are not role models and the programme is flawed.

Step 1 – Senior management buy in

Ensure buy in from senior management and that the peer to peer mentoring programme is part of the company’s Talent Management programme.

Step 2 – Mentor recruitment

The success of the programme relies on the ability of the organisation to recruit appropriate mentors. Each potential mentor should be interviewed against a criteria of desired competencies and required skills, an essential part of the recruitment should include a self assessment from the potential mentor as this would indicate their level of self awareness and skill level. There are a number of things that need to be considered when chosing the right peer mentor including the following:

ü Is the proposed mentor already considered a role model within the department/organisation?

ü Is the proposed mentor able to accept constructive criticism and continually learns from the experiences that they gone through?

ü Does the proposed mentor have the ability to empower others?

ü Does the proposed mentor have a good work record or one that has improved over time?

Step 3 – Mentor training

All mentors should be trained before they begin this important role and should not have to rely soley on trail and area to succeed. They should be trained on essential skills like coaching techniques, how to transfer their knowledge, the need for confidentiality, how to deal with conflict and conflict of interests for example. They should also have their own mentor to ensure that they continue to develop and know how to deal with the issues that may arise. Most companies prefer an external mentor in this role.

Step 4 – Relationship building

There should be a good match between the mentor and the mentee and they should both agree to the relationship. Many companies fail when they enforce a particular mentor onto a mentee or when either of the party does not understand the nature of the relationship or the roles that they play. There should be activities that allow the two individuals to get to know each other so that they can build a trusted relationship.

The mentor will need to assess the needs of the mentee and explain to him how the mentor will help him achieve his objectives. They should agree a time that they will meet , and a format that they will work to. They will also discuss the level of confidentiality that they hold themselves to.

Step 5 – Ending the relationship

It is very important that the mentoring relationship does not fade into inactivity over time but has a formal ending. This allows a period of review between the mentor and the mentee, a time to celebrate successes and plan for the future.

When things don’t work out quite the way you hoped …

John had been mentoring Jane for three months now and he was aware that she was not performing as expected despite the additional support that he had been providing. She was also becoming despondent and was reluctant to take on board the suggestions that he was providing without explaining why.

John was perplexed and was concerned that his own reputation as a mentor would be affected as well as the way that Jane’s morale was spiralling. He had received little training and was unsure what to do next, he felt bound by his confidentiality agreement with Jane and didn’t feel like he had anyone to discuss his concerns with.

Fortunately the company had recognised that their peer mentors needed additional help. They had realised that they didn’t have the expertise in house to mentor the mentors or deal with their concerns around confidentiality.

John contacted his external mentor and discussed with her the concerns that he was having and explored the options that he had available to him. He realised in his mentoring session that there were a number of things that he had overlooked when he was working with Jane.

He had believed that because he was Jane’s mentor she should do exactly what he told her to do in the manner that he directed. This did not take into account Jane’s learning style or her motivations. John was getting frustrated by her lack of response which was making him more dictorial in his manner.

John didn’t recognise the pressures Jane was under in internal comms nor did their have a relationship that would support open disclosure on both sides. John worked with his external mentor on these issues and was over time able to become a better and more effective mentor. His mentor also advised the company to initiate mentor training for all peer mentors to ensure that this error was not duplicated. Jane was allocated a more suitable and experienced mentor and her performance steadily improved.

Peer to peer mentoring is an extremely valuable tool for organisations looking for ways to continuously develop their teams, however it is vital to ensure the both the mentor and the mentee receive the appropriate support and guidance if the organisation is to reap the long term benefits of this approach.

Tags: Mentoring

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 1:06 pm and is filed under Articles, Leadership, Mentoring. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.